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I believe GP might be taking about an add-on, not a substitute for the existing battery. Perhaps a tiny trailer hooked up to a standardized coupling that you re

by usrusr 2y ago

I believe GP might be taking about an add-on, not a substitute for the existing battery. Perhaps a tiny trailer hooked up to a standardized coupling that you rent when you are venturing out on something that's more than an hour of driving. It would mostly be a challenge for mechanical engineers, to come up with some solution that does not ruin driving characteristics too. Perhaps even involving some heavily computerized active suspension, just not a dangling ticket trivial mini trailer that swings into dangerous resonance... Swapping the floorboard batteries, yeah, won't happen. You'd rather see the battery car self-driving in close slipstream formation connected with a transmission wire that's never mechanically loaded.

simmerup 2y ago
You say won’t happen, but there are Chinese companies that offer you different size batteries based on need. Going cross country? Swap out for a massive battery. Just doing city runs? Get the smaller lighter cheaper battery
- usrusr 2y ago
  Are they profitable though? Sounds like a painful investment trap, where the company can always declare projections of a happy future once a certain threshold would be reached in terms of installed base of compatible cars with interchangeable batteries, and every time growth in installed base starts to visibly miss the optimistic prognosis they can say "uncle" and force a reset by introducing some new incompatible format "this time it will be better, need more money, now!" (I know nothing about how intra China VC works or does not work, but battery swap schemes sound like an effective capital trap - note that those traps tend to work best when even the ones setting them up don't recognize their nature, I'm not accusing anyone on doing it on purpose!)